G20 Leaders Endorse Enhanced Financial Inclusion Indicators

09/05/2013 - 5:25pm

At their Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, on September 5-6, 2013, the G20 Leaders supported new measures to track progress towards financial inclusion. The Leaders endorsed the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators developed by the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) and designed to assess the state of financial inclusion by measuring access to, use and quality of financial services.

Reliable data is critical for policy makers to make evidence-based decisions in advancing financial inclusion. The aim of the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators is to support countries in achieving their financial inclusion goals by providing tools to measure three dimensions of financial inclusion: (i) access to financial services; (ii) usage of financial services; and (iii) the quality of the service delivery.

Countries are encouraged to collect and monitor their own data and supplement the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators, especially those most meaningful in their own country context. The G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators are linked to existing data sources to aid the ease of indicator collection. The data sources include the World Bank Global Findex, the IMF Financial Access Survey, Gallup World Poll, the World Bank Financial Capability Surveys, OECD National Financial Literacy and Inclusion Surveys, OECD SME Scoreboard, and the World Bank Global Payments Systems Survey.

Developed by the GPFI’s Data and Measurement Subgroup and its Implementing Partners, the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators build on the G20 Basic Set originally endorsed at the Los Cabos Summit in Mexico in 2012. The newly released indicators incorporate significant enhancements for increased insight into both usage of and access to financial inclusion, whilst also incorporating key measures on the quality aspects of providing financial services. Measures on remittances, the use of mobile transactions, financial literacy, consumer protection and barriers to entry for the use of financial services are amongst the key additional indicators that have been included.

An overview of the G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators can be found here

DATA

The G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators assess the state of financial inclusion and digital financial services, nationally and globally. The data, which measures accessibility, use, and quality of financial services, can be used by countries to support their financial inclusion goals.